


Torn Down

by eppyweppy



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Beach Scene, Angst, Everyone has feelings, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Anguish, Poor Charles, charles feels everything, the coin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 19:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18212558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eppyweppy/pseuds/eppyweppy
Summary: A collection of sorts.1.) Erik succeeds at blowing up all the ships on the beach in Cuba, killing thousands. It has a disastrous affect on Charles, whose mind is always injured from holding back Shaw, and from the coin and feeling death. Lots of angst and mental anguish. Not really a happy ending. Honestly just super angsty.There should be a second and third story.





	Torn Down

Shaw fought viciously, like a wild animal ripping and clawing his way through Charles’s mental defenses. Charles struggled, gritting his teeth and leaning his body’s weight against the side of the plane as he focused on keeping control of Shaw, using all his power to hold the man completely still. To protect Erik. But the power Shaw had absorbed – the horrible sickening radiation – was like poison to Charles, sending waves of physical pain pulsing through his body. 

And Erik, cutting out his voice as he placed the helmet on, blue eyes glittering coldly. He could see everything through Shaw’s eyes, and feel everything Shaw felt. It was disconcerting, watching his friend stalk toward him – Shaw – like a predator hunting its prey. 

Radiation flared into him, sending a distressing wave of nausea rolling deep into the pit of his stomach. His body wanted to retch, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. He focused, trembling with pain as the powerful mutant mentally thrashed against his mind, each strike like a physical blow, hurting him in invisible ways.

Erik, raising a coin that Charles knows the significance of. And Shaw knows it too. Heat burns at him from all sides. He shudders in pain, forcing all his thoughts into strengthening his barricade, blocking the man from breaking free and regaining control. He almost misses it. The coin, moving towards his face. No, not his face. Shaw’s face. But at the moment, it is all the same. 

His body in the plane trembles weakly, knees giving out before slumping toward the ground. Moira, somewhere in the mess of his awareness, rushes to hold him up, but stays quiet.

Shaw, enraged, desperate, blasts his power against Charles, and it _flays_ him. Shreds through his walls, leaving gaping holes, shattering his thoughts and erupting real pain both in his mind and on his body. He almost falls, then. Almost loses. 

The coin enters his skull.

The pain is excruciating, and so startling that if it wasn’t for Shaw dying, he would have lost his hold He struggles, desperate, locking down on the body even as the pain threatens to rip him in two. Someone is screaming, and he realizes it’s him. Shaw has stopped fighting back, his consciousness burning away as the coin sinks through brain tissue, and Charles’s is left wondering how he can even feel it at all.

But he does. All the way until the coin is exiting, and he’s still screaming when he’s brutally torn away from Shaw’s dead mind, crumpling to the floor as Moira sinks down beside him, desperately trying to find out what is wrong.

His head pulsed with pain, thudding along with his racing heart. He had never been connected with another person as they died, and even knowing who Shaw was, and the things he did, it barely made the horrible sensations and emotions running through him any less agonizing. The memories, emotions, and reality of another person all gone. Snapped away so violently that his own nerve endings felt raw and delicate.

Charles staggered to his feet, swaying, while Moira came up next to him, taking a part of his weight as he wavers unsteadily out of the wreckage of the plane. His vision is grayed out around the edges, and flashing lights glistened in what little he could see. His stomach lurched violently, and his head burst with fresh pain as he vomited over the sandy ground, chest aching and sides heaving. 

Everything was agony, but he had to move. Had to see Erik. 

And there he was, floating out of the submarine with that blasted helmet, dropping Shaw’s dead body on the ground. Charles felt light-headed and weak as Moira looked at him with concern, seemingly connecting the dots.

Charles, struggling with his frayed mind, only caught clips and pieces of Erik’s speech, blinking wearily to try and clear his vision.

What he heard wasn’t good. _They are our enemy,_ , while pointing at the fleet of ships in the ocean.

His legs moved of their own accord, lurching unsteadily toward Erik to stand at his side, trying to hide the way his body was trembling. “Even now… pointing at us… Tell me I’m wrong, Charles,” Erik’s voice came into focus at the end, as his friend turned to look at him expectantly. Charles wasn’t sure if it was his own ability to hide his pain and weakness or Erik being too distracted over finally defeating the man who had ruined his entire life that prevented Erik from noticing the state Charles was in.

And Charles, his mind shuddering weakly, forced a shaking hand to his head to press two fingers to his skull and cast his thoughts out to the fleet.

Too much. Pain shattered his skull, spreads his few remaining strings of thought into corners. So many people. So many voices. Fear and uncertainty. Anger and distress. Confusion. A longing to return home. Faces of family members of the young men flitting across his mind. He jerked his head, struggling to grasp onto something solid. Erik took it as an affirmative.

A loud sound – many loud sounds – caught his attention. Allowed him to focus enough to look up to see many – hundreds – of missiles flying toward them. Each and every ship, shooting all it had toward the strange people on the beach. They didn’t understand.

More than that – they were afraid. Afraid they would die for this. Afraid they made the wrong decision, to listen to orders. 

Charles wasn’t afraid. The missiles stopped in midair, looking almost terrifying, as if time itself had frozen. But no – Erik had stopped them.

But then they were moving again. Rotating slowly. Facing the direction they had been sent from.

The burst of pure terror he felt then wasn’t just his own, but the thoughts of thousands of human minds from the ships. He struggled to withdraw himself from them, but couldn’t quite grasp the tendrils of his mind to do so. 

“Erik, no!” He cried out desperately, as the missiles began to fly toward the ships. The terror doubled. It was as if every part of him was filled with pure fear, and suddenly he was launching himself at Erik, tackling the larger man to the ground. Distracting him enough for several missiles to fall away, exploding in midair. He grappled, trying to grip the helmet.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Charles!” Erik snarled. _But you will._ An elbow caught him across the face, sending him tumbling sideways to the sand. The headache was worse, the terror worse, the desperate desire to flee filling his mind. Most of these feelings weren’t his own.

Erik was on top of him, pinning him with one hand while the other was keeping his powers locked onto the missiles, returning them to their deadly path.

_No, no, no!_

He brought his arm up, slamming it against Erik’s, while trying to lunge once again for the helmet. Erik turned, punching him brutally in the face.

His world grayed out again, so stunned by the pain currently pulsing through his skull that he momentarily forgot what he was doing. His mind picked up on the thousands of terrified minds screaming out from the ships, as they all watched the missiles coming for them. Young men, some even younger than himself, wishing they were home with their families. Grieving over the memories they had, grieving for the mourning they would bring to their own families. Adults, thinking of their wives and children at home, one holding the picture of his newborn child.

Charles was writhing, managing to turn onto his stomach and barely push himself upright. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything over the desperate yells of crewman trying to escape the ship and survive. 

When the missiles hit, the impact of nearly two thousand instant deaths immediately dropped him to the ground in shock. He had never felt so much pain before. His skull felt as if he had been torn apart, his brain nothing more than sparse cells, barely functioning. Shock waves of agony raced down his spine. His ears rang so loudly that he didn’t hear his own scream of pain and anguish, hands clamped over his ears as if it would somehow drown out all the voices yelling in his head.

_I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die! Please! Someone help us! I don’t -_

While nearly two thousand men died from the impact and explosion, another six hundred men did not have the luxury of an immediate death. Many were burned, bones broken from the force of explosions. Others, thrown into the sea, pinned beneath the metal hulls as they were pushed down into the depths. 

Charles was sure he was drowning. Burning. Surely he must have broken very bone in his body – the pain was so intense. Some logical part of him scrambled to pull his mind back, away from everyone and everything around him, but he didn’t have the strength. When two hundred men, trapped in the only surviving part of a sinking ship died from drowning, something in his mind popped and for a brief period of time, there was just darkness and silence.

It didn’t last. 

He flinched violently as he felt hands on him, curling into himself as best he could. Pain and nausea and a sensation that all the strength in his body had been drained threatened to send him right back over the edge into unconsciousness. People were talking, familiar voices. 

He shuddered. Forced his eyes open. Wished he hadn’t. The light was blinding. Colors swirling violently. With a jerking motion he tipped to his side and retched again, with only blood and bile left inside him. 

He struggled to make sense of the shapes around him. 

Moira. Raven. Erik. _Erik._

A feeling of terror and rage engulfed him, and he tried to backpedal away from his friend, but was too weak to even move himself. Sickening horror at the realization of what had happened.

Erik had just single-handedly murdered over two thousand people. Pain wracked through him at the thought. His vision blurred. A voice in his ears told him to calm down. That it would be alright. He couldn’t hold back a horrible sound wrenching from his throat as he gripped his pounding head. 

Blessedly, everything went dark. And silent.

* * *

Erik noticed that Charles was shaking, but pushed it off to be simple strain from having tried to keep Shaw under control. He couldn’t resist another pang of relief that the man was dead. Finally dead. There was also satisfaction at the thought. But even now that relief was tempered by the feeling of many weapons being turned, aimed toward them. And there was rage, instant and brutal. How dare they?

The thirst for revenge was still there. A desperate need to prove to the humans that mutants were not to be kept in the shadows any longer. Not to be treated less than. And when the missiles went flying, he smirked. Metal. Every single one of them.

For show, he did nothing initially as the missiles flew, and waited until they were nearly upon them before raising his hand calmly to stop them. He turned them slowly, back in the very direction they came. And sent them flying back.

“Erik, no!” he heard Charles shout and ignored him, but was surprised when the smaller man slammed into him, tackling him to the ground. His attention distracted, he felt several missiles blow up in the air. Growling, he swung his elbow back into Charles’s head. “I don’t want to hurt you, Charles!” He shouted, rolling so that he was pinning his friend to the ground.

He reached out again, correcting the path of the missiles back toward the ships. The world would see what mutants could really do.

He was surprised, then, when Charles lashed out again, knocking his pinning arm away and lunging for Erik’s head. The helmet. He grit his teeth in annoyance, and punched his friend in the head. Hard.

He felt an immediate pang of guilt, but pushed it away as he stood up, directing the remaining missiles back on their course. He could apologize later. Now he just needed to finish his job. Eliminate all enemies. 

The human woman, Moira, tried to shoot at him, but he began deflecting the bullets with his other hand, barely worrying. He would deal with that pest next.

The moment when every single ship blew into pieces, turning the horizon into fire and smoke was glorious. It was almost so brilliant that the realization that there had been people, perhaps thousands of people, living on those ships didn’t quite make it across his mind until he heard an awful sound behind him. It was some painful cross between a whimper and a choke.

Erik turned, puzzled, to see Charles stagger before falling to the ground, hands over his ears, blood suddenly streaming from his nose. Erik was frozen, up until Charles let out a horrible scream of pain that forced him moving, stumbling toward his friend, flinching at the already forming bruise on his face that he had put there. 

“Charles?” He whispered, kneeling gently beside his friend, trying to tilt his face up. He could see thick trails of blood coming from his ears, and tried to understand why.

Charles seemed to be choking, as if unable to breath, fingernails digging into the skin around his head. And then, suddenly, he arched his back and went motionless. Only for a moment. Then he began to thrash in weak, jerking motions, eyes closed and seemingly still unconscious. 

“He’s seizing. Get him on his side!” Hank barked, approaching but keeping his distance, in case Erik attacked. 

Erik moved, rolling Charles sideways as he seized, heart racing with fear. He didn’t understand what was happening. Was it a side effect from holding back Shaw? Was it from all the radiation?

Truthfully, he knew very little about the negative effects of telepathy on the telepath. He had never really asked. Charles had always treated it like there was no problem. 

Charles jerked awake. 

“Charles, it’s alright. Look at me,” Erik said.

The small man was trembling violently in his arms, before his blue eyes opened. They were unfocused and bloodshot, and again Erik flinched at the horrible whimper of pain Charles made before the telepath jerked away, vomiting blood and bile onto the sand. 

“Charles!” Raven cried out, from where she had been watching in horror, dropping down beside her brother. 

Charles’s still unfocused eyes seemed to be trying to find the source of the voices, and they settled briefly on Erik, before widening in terror. His friend was suddenly struggling, trying to move backwards, but too weak to even go so far as an inch. 

“Charles calm down. It’s alright,” Raven whispered gently, but Charles only seemed to flinch, shrinking in on himself as his heads went up to his head again, clasping it as if in great pain. And god, the sound he made. Erik would rather throw himself in front of a thousand missiles than have to hear that gut-wrenching cry ever again. 

He wanted to feel relief when Charles simply fainted, but all he felt was fear and grief.

“What’s wrong with him?” Erik asked desperately, but no one was able to offer any answers.

* * *

It hadn’t taken too much convincing to get Azazel to teleport all of them to the mansion. After the display of power earlier, all of the mutants on the beach had been calm, no one fighting with each other, even if there were some glares and cold shoulders. It had taken a couple trips to make the distance with everyone, but they arrived, an unconscious Charles still being cradled in Erik’s arms. Now, the telepath lay motionless in his bed, trails of dried blood leading from his nose and ears that Raven was trying to gently clean off.

Hank, having taken some kind of 'serum’ and reverted to his human appearance was working on trying to figure out what was wrong with Charles, muttering rapidly under his breath. 

When nothing obvious turned up on the tests and scans, Erik decided he was going to find help in a different way. Telepath to telepath.

* * *

Emma Frost didn’t look as hostile as she had before, but she definitely didn’t want to be anywhere near him as she began to retreat. Erik, using his helmet, was safe from her telepathy. But he wasn’t here to fight. He ignored the news, telling people about the tragedy at sea and the deaths of 2754 soldiers, Soviet and American. Tried to ignore the sudden pressure in his chest. Was it guilt? Regret? Why should he feel either? They would have killed all the mutants and returned home without a care in the world. Right?

“I need your help,” Erik said. She narrowed her eyes at him. Waited. Looked at the news. Then she nodded tersely.

When Erik returned with Emma it was to a mansion of tired, anxious mutants.

Hank kept rubbing at his head, as if it pained him, looking pale and shaky. 

“What happened?” Erik asked, approaching the scientist. Hank looked up at him, giving a nervous, doubtful glance at Emma who simply looked at him impassively. 

“He had a nightmare. And he projected. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an awful headache,” Hank sighed, rubbing at the center of his forehead once again. Erik felt a twinge of anxiety. The worst spot being in the forehead, which was right where…

Erik and Emma entered Charles’s room alone. The young telepath lay motionless, skin pale, eyes closed. He could see beads of sweat on the man’s forehead. A moment later he realized he should have kept his helmet on.

A flash of pain started in his head. Then burst into a fire across his skull. He felt as if his head was simultaneously being split open while being burned. With a cry, he fell to his knees, slightly aware of Emma changing form beside him to protect herself from the projection. He felt as if he was spiraling uncontrollably, falling straight down. Then he was hitting the ground, heart racing with fear – a terror that he was about to die. Holding close a picture of a woman holding a baby – his wife and the child he had never had a chance to hold. 

Explosions. Screaming. Chaos.

_I don’t want to die. Someone help! I want to go home._ The metal door exploded inward, sending him flying back against the wall, bones breaking from the impact. Water rushing in. Cold, unforgiving, sweeping him away. He was drowning – salt water flooding into his mouth, filling his throat and entering his chest. He choked and spluttered, images of his family and his baby flashing before his eyes. And then -

_Enough_ , the words echoed in his mind. The pain faded. He thrashed on the ground, retching water that wasn’t even there, still struggling with the unforgiving pain and panic that had swept through him. He was in Charles’s room again, and he was still struggling to grasp who he was and who he was not as he saw Emma, her hand against Charles’s head, eyes squeezed shut with concentration and pain.

“What was… that?” He rasped, his voice hoarse from the panic that had gripped his chest, and the pain in his throat. 

Emma didn’t open her eyes before she responded. “His mind was attached to the soldiers you killed,” her voice was cold, like the frost she was named after.

Erik blanched. An excruciating horror stabbing into his chest. For a moment he forgot how to breath, before very forcibly trying to rise to his feet, feeling a stabbing pain in his skull as he did so. It wasn’t possible. Was it? He remembered Charles’s scream of agony from the beach, and it was probably a sound that would be stuck in his mind for the rest of his life. He tried to forget the sensations and memories he had experienced, of that one soldier. Tried not to imagine what it was like to feel thousands of them.

“How?” He whispered, guilt threatening to overwhelm him.

Emma finally opened her eyes, turning to look at him with a hard, almost angry glare. “Keeping hold of Shaw, powered up with all that radiation, plus knowing how to fight telepathy nearly ripped his mind to shreds. And then having to feel that coin go all the way through his head did devastating damage. It took all of his power just to connect with the soldiers. He didn’t have enough left to disconnect.” 

With those words she may as well have stabbed him through the heart. His fault. He did this. Charles had gone through agony because of him. And on top of it all he had physically attacked his friend as well, ignoring his pleas, murdering thousands…

The desire to run is overwhelming. “Will he… be alright?”

Emma seems to stare at him, as though contemplating whether to answer him or not. Eventually, perhaps because of pity or just exhaustion, she finally does. 

“He will wake up.”

Erik managed to keep himself there long enough for Raven to show up before bolting out the door. 

And Charles did wake up. Three days later.

* * *

Dreams haunted him. Memories from those now dead stained his mind. His walls, torn down and crushed entirely sent his thoughts spiraling far out of his reach. He wasn’t sure how long he was stuck, struggling to sort through the mess of horrible feelings that were rushing through him. Or slowly, brick by brick, replacing the walls of his mind to protect himself. Pain was a constant companion, pulsing through him from head to toe. Instead of recovering energy, all he did was get more exhausted.

Eventually, something changed. A gentle touch from the outside, soothing the agony of his mind. He was too exhausted – too weak – to determine the source, but he felt their genuine want to help. He let them help.

When he had finally managed to make his walls, fragile and barely there, but enough to keep himself safe, he began to wake. Slowly, painfully. Awakening was difficult, trying to force his eyes to open, and to take in the world for the first time since… however long it had been. Surely some time had passed. Rebuilding after the trauma he had taken was extensive. 

Three things ran through his mind when he finally woke up completely. One – his head still really hurt. He had migraines less painful than the pain that was still bouncing around inside his skull. Two – he was really thirsty, but that thirst compounded with the remembered sensation of drowning on sea water, and he found himself anxious at the thought of being anywhere near a glass of water. And three – he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t that he sensed another mind near him. No, he wasn’t anywhere near ready to even attempt to cast his thoughts out to search for others. He could hear the breathing. And then he could practically feel their presence in the room.

So when his eyes fell upon the dozing, pale face of Erik he wasn’t startled. But he felt an immediate, heart-clenching pain and fear. Thousands of deaths. The thought came across his mind, unbidden, and he suddenly had to fight with himself to not freak out, to try and drown out the memories struggling to resurface. He failed. 

Pain. Bones snapping, breaking. Explosions. Fire racing across his skin, eating away at his nerves, body convulsing with pain. He cried out, and his cry was echoed by that of another man.

“Charles! Charles, calm down. It’s just me. Focus on me,” the voice was saying, and he struggled to pull away from the pain and on the voice itself. The memory was trickling away, leaving him breathless and trembling, phantom pain still lingering throughout his body. 

Erik was above him, eyes wide, one hand pressed to the side of his head, and Charles was confused and scared and just in so much pain. 

As Erik winced in pain, Charles realized his stray thoughts were shooting through his newly built walls, projecting outward. With great difficulty he pulled them back, forcing them to remain enclosed, even as the pain spiked through his skull. 

“Erik,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and weak from a long time of not using it. 

He tried to squash the fear. But there was anger and disgust and horror, memories of missiles flying and ships carrying two and a half thousand souls going up in flames, and somehow he can’t look at Erik the same way. Erik had killed people before. He knew that. But it was different. They had been Nazis. Responsible for the horrific treatment and murder of so many people, including Erik and his family. He could understand that rage. 

But this… this was different.

He wasn’t sure if he could forgive Erik this time. Not with the memories and echoes of thousands of lost voices still sitting in his brain. 

Unable to bring himself to say anything more, he closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Next Up: Charles was prepared to fight to hold Shaws mind, but he wasn't prepared for Shaw to accept it and use the connection to have some fun.
> 
> Please leave a comment and let me know if there's any obvious flaws! I'm trying to keep things in character and mostly canon. You can try and request some kind of story but I don't write any kind of romance or fluff.


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